Sirpa Lane in THE BEAST, one of Borowczyk's best and most outrageous films.
BEAST” (59m), a superb documentary combining silent 16mm footage from 1975 of Borowczyk and his cast and crew at work on the film and which offers a fascinating insight into his work methods, together with commentary from regular collabora- tor Noël Véry; “Frenzy of Ecstasy” (4m), which dis- plays Borowczyk’s original sketches of the Beast and the treatment for an unfilmed sequel, “Mother- hood”; “Venus on the Half Shell” (Escargot de
Vénus, 1975, 4m), which focuses on the erotic paint- ings of Bona Tibertelli DiPisis (she also appears and provides the voice-over narration); and a worn- looking theatrical trailer which presents a censored version—black squares conceal the offending shots—of Romilda’s pursuit through the woods by the Beast.
The accompanying 31-page illustrated booklet contains essays by Daniel Bird, Michael Brooke, an article by David Thompson which originally appeared in the June 2001 issue of SIGHT & SOUND, a case history of the film’s censorship issues by the BBFC’s Craig Lapper, a collection of contemporary reviews, some positive (John Pym, writing in THE MONTHLY FILM BULLETIN in October 1978, praises the film for being a “joy to watch”) and some negative (“You don’t need subtitles to tell you what is going on. Anyway, the film is not for people who can read,” huffed THE DAILY MIRROR’s Arthur Thirkell). As with all of the discs, THE BEAST is pre- sented in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 with mono 1.0 audio and optional English subtitles, and is a glowing remaster from the 35mm negative.
It would seem that cinema audiences have fi- nally learned to appreciate the “particular” sensi- bilities that many believed had led this promising filmmaker astray more than 40 years ago. Borowczyk’s short films had rarely been screened in the UK for years until the British Film Institute launched a season of his work, curated by Daniel Bird, at London’s National Film Theatre in May 2014, which served as a taster for this collection. On August 26, with the success of that exhibi- tion behind them, Arrow Films successfully raised £26,000 on Kickstarter to fund the 2K restora- tion of GOTO, THE ISLAND OF LOVE now avail- able. These triumphs, coupled with the respect inherent in the presentation of the CAMERA OBSCURA box set especially, but also in the tasteful packaging of the individual releases, have made renewed interest in Boro contagious. More recently, in April 2015, the Film Society at New York’s Lincoln Center played host to a week-long retrospective entitled “Obscure Pleasures: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk,” where Arrow Films’ eagerly anticipated 2K restoration of the director’s oft-censored THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE (Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, 1981) was unveiled prior to its release on Blu-ray and DVD later that same month—in the UK and the US. Its schedule indi- cated that, with at least seven of Borowczyk’s features still unrestored and uncollected, the grand story of his Blu-ray renaissance may be less than half-told.
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